A trailer for Netflix's upcoming One Piece live-action series was recently released, causing a huge uproar in the anime community. This adaptation of Eiichiro Oda's magnum opus is set to be one of the most expensive shows ever made by Netflix, with each episode reportedly having an $18 million budget.
The budget of this ambitious One Piece live-action adaptation rivals that of other massively popular live-action series such as Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, making fans hopeful that the quality of the CGI and set design shown in the series will be up to par.
Netflix's One Piece live-action series will be released on August 31
Live-action adaptations of manga and anime IPs often suffer from numerous glaring issues such as poor CGI, inappropriate casting, derivative stories, and low budgets, making them fall flat and be panned by fans and critics alike. Thus, the upcoming Netflix One Piece live-action series faces an uphill battle.
A trailer for the upcoming series was revealed on Netflix TUDUM, causing the entire anime community to have mixed reactions. However, with every new detail coming forward about the series, fans are slowly starting to become more optimistic about it being a decent adaptation of Oda's work.
Reportedly, the upcoming series is one of the most expensive ever produced by Netflix, with a budget of around $18 million per episode. The budget surpasses anything ever seen for an anime live-action adaptation, dwarfing other shows such as Cowboy Beebop, which had a $6–7 million per episode budget.
Not only anime, but the One Piece live-action series also rivals the budget of popular shows such as Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, and The Witcher. To put it into comparison, the first season of GOT had a budget of $15 million per episode, with Witcher's first season having a decent budget of $10 million per episode. On the other hand, House of the Dragon season 1 had a $20 million per episode budget.
These figures show how astronomically expensive Netflix's One Piece live-action adaptation is. With such a large budget, many of the fans are now hopeful that the show will at least have better CGI than what they are used to seeing in live-action anime.
However, not all One Piece fans are convinced that the series will be a success just because it has a bloated budget. Many fans have speculated that the series will fail and have compared it to other big-budget disappointments, such as Rings of Power, which had a staggering $60 million per episode budget.
Despite this cynical attitude from a large section of the fandom, some fans have also pointed out that Oda himself is an executive producer of the series. The casting choices and set design also look good in the trailer.
Fans are cautiously optimistic that the upcoming series will be a success and do justice to Oda's magnum opus as a result of this and the news of such a generous budget. Some fans have also asked the fandom to respect Oda's wish for One Piece to reach a larger audience and give the show a fair chance rather than just predetermining its failure.